Tag: bebo

Well, its Sunday night, but, its the best of Sunday nights, because its a public holiday tomorrow, so no work (hurrah!). This post is coming to you live from my bed, where I am currently nestled doing a terrible job of not smearing Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream all over my clean white bed sheets. Cry. Anyway, a week or so ago I stumbled on an embarrassingly hysterical time capsule of my mid teens, in the form of my Bebo page, and there were some eye-opening features that, I think, perfectly sum up how our generation (the golden generation!) shaped the beginnings of the social media era! Forget Facebook, Tumblr, SnapChat, Whatsapp and Instagram, this my friends is where it all began. Well, this and MySpace. Here’s 22 things that come flooding back to you when seeing your Bebo page after approximately 7 years. And yes, the pics are ALL from my own Bebo page. Just because I love to voluntarily humiliate myself.

Enjoy!

1. An argument with your friend resulted in an instant rethink of the order of your friends on your page

2. The other half of me was pretty much the greatest honour you could be given

3. You remember the day when the share the love count went up to 3 per day and your sluttiness tripled. And on that day you were most probably at home, on your gigantic desktop PC, grooving along to the dialup internet tone, shouting at your mum to get off the pissing landline. *You may be intrigued to know that since we all migrated to Facebook, the “luv” count has increased to five per day!

4. You picked a cool indie song to play out when someone goes on your profile, to accurately reflect your amazing taste in music and emotional depth and complexity. I believe mine was Plain White Tees – Let Me Take You There.

5. Your profile had something like this on it, which was cleverly designed to appear as though you were filling in essential information, while subtly further enhancing your level or perceived “alternativeness” that was outlined by the aforementioned theme tune to your profile.

[x]..Celebrates on-9th june..[x]

[x]..Found in- My own lil world!. .[x]

[x]..Brushes- Redish Brownish hair!..[x]

[x]..Crys behind- Brown eyes..[x]

[x]..Stands at- 5ft 7..[x]

[x]..Walks in- Size 6..[x]

[x]..Hates- Goodbyes…[x]

[x]..Loves- shopping&WESTLIFE..[x]

[x]..Misses- France[x]

[x]..Hides- Emotion..[x]

6. YoU wRoTe YoUr EnTiRe PrOfIlE lIkE tHis. Because, well, why wouldn’t you

7. Everything started with xXx…xXx or xoxo (see my above display name for full details)

8. You created a quiz about yourself and judged your friends by how well they scored, and had subsequent arguements about their response to questions like “Who’s sexier? Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom”.

9. You then created a quiz about the aforementioned fitties, just to make sure your pals were as prepared for your imminent relationship as you were.

10. You copied these smilies from some smart arse’s “notes” section.

11. Profile pictures depict the era known as BI (Before Instagram), and followed the below criteria:

A black and white/sepia effect on your camera was used

Taken of yourself with your arm showing (the art that has now become known as the selfie. Don’t you noughties kids go thinking you invented this. We’ve been pulling this shit for years)

Preferably looking away from camera, occasionally using wind created by your hair dryer, because it was clearly plausible that you had a modelling career at one point or another

Often with a caption like “wtf am i doing lol XD”, so you don’t seem conceited, despite being 100% sure you look fit as

12. You changed your profile “skin” almost daily

13. You replaced one of your info sections with a touching tribute to how much you “luv ur gurlz”

15. You find you wrote ‘scribble back’ or ‘wb’ after each wall post, because there was absolutely no shame in seeming keen back then

16. You explicitly wrote private jokes about your “crush” on your friend’s page, hoping he’ll see. Or better still, in a foreign language, because after a B grade GCSE you were obviously fluent. You left a highly crackable code for everyone to understand.

17. On your friends’ whiteboards were drawings of phallic objects, because you were so 100% sexually experienced at age 13. Obviously.

18. You created a photo album of your friends with their profile pictures in it. Probably entitled “Girlies”. You would also have an album called something like “Moi”, “Piccys of meeeeee”….or similar…written in extremely coherent “text speak”.

19. Your square of 16 top friends featured a few ‘arrow’ photos pointing to certain people, with delightful sentiments like “Luv dis gal” or “My fit boi xx”

20. You wrote “shopping lol xx XD” under ‘sports’

21. You had a countdown timer to something significant in your life. Like Christmas Day, or the end of your tense and incredibly challenging SAT exams.

22. You were only cute and cool if your page was plastered with abstract artwork like this:

22. You friendship group gradually migrated to Facebook. Some didn’t make the transition as well as others…

…And then when you finally all caught on to facebook, you changed your bebo profile to say something to this effect:

“Dnt rly use Bebo nemre, tis shit, fb me xoxo”

(I haven’t named and shamed the friend who posted that message to me on 21/06/2008. I’m wondering if he knows who he is!)

So, there we go. While being intensely cringe worthy, its also a hilarious trip down memory lane. Unfortunately, the Bebo site itself has been disabled, but all links to profiles are still active, you just need to remember your screen name to be able to search it on Google. Helpful hint – it probably has xx_sexi_xx in it somewhere!